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Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sober 364 Sober 364 Standing on the promises Sober 364 Let's sing this one out on the first Standing on the promises of Christ my King Through eternal ages let his praises reign Glory in the highest I will shout and sing Standing on the promises of God Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God my Savior Standing Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God Standing on the promises that cannot fail With the house of swords of doubt and fear assail The living word of God I shall prevail Standing on the promises of God Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God my Savior Standing Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord Bound to him eternally with a strong sword Overcoming daily with a spirit sword Standing on the promises of God Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God my Savior Standing Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God my Savior Standing on the promises that cannot fall Listening every moment to the Spirit's call Resting in my Savior as my all in all Standing on the promises of God Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God my Savior Standing Standing Standing Standing on the promises of God Amen Word of prayer God save us Lord Let all be done for your honor and glory and I pray that your spirit will grow and be edified by the preaching of peace and word. Pray in the name of Jesus' name, Amen. Alright, let's turn to our next Psalm, Psalm 368 Psalm 368, Holy Bible book divine In verse 68 On the first Holy Bible book divine Precious treasure thou art mine Mine to tell me whence I came Mine to teach me what I am Mine to shine me when I grow Mine to show a Savior's love Mine thou art to guide and guard Mine to punish for reward Mine to comfort in distress suffering in this wilderness Mine to show by living faith faith and triumph all over death Mine to tell the joys to come and the sinners do O thou holy book divine Precious treasure thou art mine Amen. Alright, great singing this afternoon. This time we're going to go through our announcements. If you do not have a bulletin, slip your hand up real high and Brother Lindsay will make sure that you get one. Keep your hand up if you need one. If you open up to the first page, you will see our service time is listed. There's always Sunday morning at 1030, Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. Wednesday night at 7 is our Bible study. We've got the soul winning opportunities listed there as well as the salvation and baptisms for the month of August as well as for the year. Let's go ahead and count up the salvation. Any salvation prior to today need to be reported? Yes, sir. Two for yesterday. Anyone else have anything for prior to today? How about for today? Soul winning today. One back there. How many between the two of you? Two. Alright. Anybody else have any salvations today? Four. Is that all soul winning? Okay, cool. Amen. Anyone else? How is the assisted living home going? Good? Good? Okay. Everything's okay? Feeling good? Very good. Amen. Alright. We'll keep up the good work out, you know, preaching the gospel, knocking on those doors. We got the offering totals down there at the bottom of the page for the month of August. Prayer requests. We have one addition Mrs. Johnson's sister Katie is added to the to the prayer list here for for addiction. So she's been given a gospel. She's saved. I believe she's saved. So we want to just pray for her. She's been having a lot of problems and just want to pray that she'll God will work in her heart and her spirit to want to desire to get right. Desire to get rid of the burden of that sin, the bondage of sin that comes with addiction. So please pray for her as well as everyone else on this list. As I mentioned this morning, Sword and Spirit Baptist Church has a lot of the church members have come down with COVID and one in particular has not been doing so well. Brother Joseph, is there any more updates on Janet or on just the people there in general? Okay. That's good. That's very good if that's the case. So continue to pray for the church and for the pastor and for everyone there. And then also I brought up this morning Brother Kevin Sepulveda in Australia is having to deal with a lot of very, very stringent restrictions due to COVID and it's really impacting their life, their church, everything. So please be in prayer for him and for their churches as they are going down to extreme lockdown measures in Australia. On the next page, today is the last evening for bringing a first time visitor to church. That's the August challenge. And we're going to be rolling right up into September. September challenge is just church attendance. We give prizes out for a lot of our monthly challenges, but we're not going to do one for this one just so you're aware of that. But that doesn't mean don't do it. Still and the whole point of this is to get you thinking about going to church, the importance of church and making it a point to maybe push yourself a little bit extra if you don't normally to try to make it to all the church services. All the church services, for those of you that, if you're newer here or whatever, we offer two services on Sunday, but they're both different. It's not like it's the same sermon preached from the morning to the afternoon just for some people who don't want to get up early and make it into service. Every service is different, so there's different truths from the Bible. Oftentimes on Sunday actually there's, the sermons are very correlated with each other just kind of the way it works out. That happens frequently. It's not all the time, but you'll end up learning that much more when you come to all the services. Wednesday night's a Bible study. We go verse by verse through one book, one chapter of a Bible, one book at a time. So we're in Isaiah chapter 22 this week. Next week we'll be on chapter 23, 24, so on, and we go verse by verse expounding on each one of those chapters individually. So try to make it into church if you travel, if you travel long distances. Some people do to come to this church and you can't make it during the midweek service. Try to find another midweek service that's closer to you that you can attend to try to meet with this challenge just to see what you can glean and gain. It's not just the preaching. It's also the fellowship. It's also just being able to, you know, maybe a blessing for other people. So just consider that as well. We've got the upcoming events listed there. Lots of preaching events. We've got the Midwest Fundamentals Conference coming up next week, and then the Mountain Baptist Church Camp, the 23rd to the 25th Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship in Texas on October 6th through the 10th. We've got our own soul winning marathon on the 23rd. We've got Brother Denzel's wedding going back up there September 10th, and then the reception at the church here on the 19th. Gingerbread house making activity on December 4th, and then the camping trip, big event of the year, next year May 9th through the 14th. So try to get those dates off for sure if you can. That camping trip's a lot of fun, and we'll get more into the details as we get closer to that. Colossians chapter 3, this is our brand new Bible memory passage. We're starting a brand new six weeks to memorize eleven verses, twelve verses, eleven verses, excuse me, it's not that hard to do eleven verses in six weeks. It'll give you a lot of time to do this. But the whole point of giving a lot of time is to try to get a lot of people involved and motivated so the people that think oh man, I'm terrible at memorization, I can't do this. It's quite a bit of time as long as you can put forth a little bit of time every single day. And eleven verses isn't getting, you know, like John chapter 8, 50 plus verses, you're going oh man, you know, it's harder to remember and keep them all current and be able to start quoting and quote all the way through all the verses. Eleven verses, it's not that difficult. Okay, honestly, I think anybody can do this, so try it out, try to get this, and I'm still doing, we use an app, a lot of us here at least have it, I don't think a lot of people are using it, but we have an app that you can use and all you have to do is just accomplish any Bible memory, like the short ones, I don't care, just show that you actually will use it, and I'll give you a code to get the full version of the Bible, it's called scripture typer, it might have changed the name, that's what it used to be called, it's a Bible memory app that we use, if you're interested, come and talk to me after service and I'll hook you up with that, we'll get you set up, it's a really fun, I think it's fun, maybe not everyone else does, I think it's a fun way of learning and memorizing, committing to memory Bible scriptures, and it also has notifications and things that try to remind you on a daily basis, you can set a schedule to go through your, the verses that you're memorizing, and instead of maybe just picking up a game to play on your phone, you can have this installed on your phone and do some Bible memory, it's, I like it. Anyhow, if you're able to quote back the passages that we have memorized, that we're memorizing, out loud to someone else, and do so word perfect and you'll earn a prize for being able to do that, we've got the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries for the month of September down there at the bottom of the page, and then on the back, homeschool field trips, we are doing this again this year, we haven't been able to do this for the past year because of all the shutdowns and things, and the restrictions from COVID, but we are back in business, so we've got the dates listed there for the homeschool field trips, if you'd like to attend, everything is paid for, but not all the lunches or food is necessarily going to be paid for. There are sign up sheets over there, we will get some new sign up sheets, because those ones are a little bit hard to read right now, so if you want to, you can still sign up there, we'll transfer the names over to one that's a little bit more legible, but they're over there on that table underneath the mother baby room, so you can sign up, and I believe there's a pen up now, it's on the window, which is probably good thinking to have it a little bit higher than right at the low level, so that's my bad for putting a pen there, trying to make it easy for people, I made it a little too easy for some of the little people, but not a big deal, we'll just get some more pieces of paper, and we'll be able to get that taken care of, so if you are interested in coming to these events, they're free of charge, like I said, it's totally free to attend these events, but we do need to know that if you plan on coming so that we could, some of these events you have to have the tickets purchased in advance and whatever, so we're going to coordinate that, so please make sure if you're planning on attending, to put your name there, and I know I was asked today, I don't have all the details on this personally, so if you have questions about like timing, you know, like what time we're meeting or whatever, if it's not, some of it's on that sheet, but some of it are not on those sheets, so you can talk to, I know my wife should know, I think Mrs. Masso, I don't know how much you know all the specific times or not, but if you don't now, you will soon, right, so just speak to one of them, and if you don't know them, you're visiting, then speak to me, I'll happily help you with that information, I'll get that information to you, so that is about it for our announcements, Brother Peter, please lead us in our next song. I believe so. Church, you can open up your handrails to Psalm 406. Psalm 406, who is on the Lord's side? In 4-0-6. All right, let's sing this one out with all our hearts. Who is on the Lord's side? Who for him will know? By thy call of mercy by thy grace be mine. We are on the Lord's side. Savior, we are light. Not for aid of glory, not for crowning call. Enter we the army, praise the warrior's song. But for love that claim it lies for whom he died. He whom Jesus named must be on his side. By thy love constraining, by thy grace be mine. We are on the Lord's side. Savior, we are light. Jesus now has bought us, not with gold or tan, but with thine oh my blood for thine eye again. With thy blessings filling, each who counts to thee. Thou has made us free. By thy great retention, by thy grace be mine. We are on the Lord's side. Savior, we are light. Fierce may be the conflict, strong may be the king's own army. None can overthrow. Round his temper ranging victory is unsure. For his truth unchanging makes the triumph sure. Joyfully by thy grace be mine. We are on the Lord's side. Savior, we are light. All right. This is our Sunday afternoon offering. Please do that for us. Before we read the Bible, I'm going to have one more announcement real quick. I almost forgot about this. Real briefly, we have the WhatsApp group for soul winning times and stuff. I just want to ask them, please, let's use that just for soul winning. If we want to have another group for other notifications and other communication with the church, let's create a separate group for that. I want to be able to keep things nice and clean to have just people who are doing soul winning not to get inundated or not have other messages come, especially when they're like real late and off hours. That's really just inconsiderate if people have notifications on and you're getting woken up in the night because there's notifications coming through and a group message really late. Let's just keep that group for the soul winning and let's keep that dedicated for that. Also, it makes it easier to go back because we update maps and do things like that with that group. Instead of having to scroll through all the rest of the stuff that's on there, we can focus on keeping that just for that. I really appreciate you guys doing that. We can get another group set up if you want to have other communication. Maybe we can have a special prayer request one or some other information, just a general church one that people want to join. That's great. I'm all for that. I think that's no problem. I think it's a good idea, but at the same time, let's try to keep the soul winning one strictly for that because then you can also manage your notifications appropriately too. Some people might want to not have notifications or have notifications or whatever. You can deal with that as you deem fit. I appreciate that. We're going to turn our Bibles to Proverbs chapter 16. Proverbs chapter 16, who do we have reading for us tonight? Brother Carter, come on up and read the passage for us this evening, please. Proverbs chapter 16. All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord wayeth the spirits. Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established. The Lord hath made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. By mercy and truth, iniquity is purged, and by the fear of the Lord man depart from evil. When a man's ways please the Lord, he may even his enemies to be at peace with him. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right. A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. A divine sentence is in the lips of the king, his mouth transgresseth not in judgment. A just weight and balance are the Lord's. All the weights of the bag are his work. It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness, for the throne is established by righteousness. Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him that speaketh right. The wrath of a king is as messengers of death, but a wise man will pacify it. In the light of the king's countenance is life, and his favor is as a cloud of the latter rain. How much better is it to get wisdom than gold, and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver? The highway of the upright is to depart from evil. He that keepeth his way preserveth his soul. Pride goeth before destruction, and in holy spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud. He that handleth the matter wisely shall find good, and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. The wise in heart shall be called prudent, and the sweetness of the lips increases learning. Understanding is as a wellspring of life unto him that hath it, but the instruction of fools is folly. The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, and addeth learning to his lips. Pleasant words are as in honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. He that laboureth laboureth for himself, for his mouth craveth it of him. An ungodly man diggeth up evil, and in his lips there is as a burning fire. A froward man soweth strife, and a whisperer seperated chief friends. A violent man enticeth his neighbor, and leadeth him into the way that is not good. He shutteth his eyes to devise forward things. Moving his lips, he bringeth evil to pass. The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. The lot is cast into the land, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Alright, let's have a word of prayer. Lord God, we thank you for your word this afternoon, Father, and pray, Lord, that we would take heed to it. I pray, Lord, that we could learn much from it and make applications to our life, Lord. Let your Holy Spirit be upon the pastor as he bring forth your word as well. We thank you, and in your son Jesus' name, we ask him to pray. Amen. Alright, my sermon this evening, I want to try to help teach a little bit on, uh, ultimately what it has to do with, is, is with judgment, right, with judging. Um, I'm not gonna get into all the Matthew 7, you know, judge not, that you be not judged, uh, for with whatever man, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged, you know. Obviously, that, like, I preach entire sermons on that, that have to deal with not being a hypocrite in your judgment and things like that, but, I, I want to deal more with how to process information that you may come across that is going to be, um, you know, maybe information against, especially against our church or churches like our church, you know, other churches that believe the same way, and, and how we ought to scrutinize or deal with, or not deal with, you know, information when it just comes your way. I mean, we live in the information age, right, so there's a lot of information that's freely available that's kind of, gets spread around and, and with social media and with other, you know, with all kinds of ways of just kind of seeing and being confronted with information, uh, it's important to know how do we, how do we examine this, what do we do with this, and what's the proper way, what's a biblical way of understanding what is right, what is applicable, you know, and there's a lot that, that kind of goes into this, and it's funny because the people who are, you know, we have adversaries, right, our church and churches like our church, other people that go to a church like this, there are adversaries. There are people who want our churches shut down, and they all have their various reasons for that, there's a lot of people who become disgruntled with, for whatever reason, inside of a church, and then they get all upset, they get, they have some problem, something's not handled the way they want it to be, or whatever, or they're just some infiltrator that never really believed to begin with, and they just want to cause problems later on down the road, and you know what, that happens a lot, there's a lot of people out there, Satan uses a lot of people to try to stop the work of a church that's doing good things. So, we have to understand that that's always going to exist, and it's never fun, you never want to, you have to deal with things that are just like, oh man, you know, what's this about, what's this drama, what's going on now, it's not fun, it's not something that you look forward to, but if you're going to live a godly life, if you're going to go to a godly church, if you're going to do work for the Lord, you have to be able to expect this, and I've covered this many times in the past in other sermons, you could read through the Bible, you could read through the book of Acts, there's always adversaries, there's always people who are going to try to stop the work, and there's many ways that that's going to try to be done, whether it be through intimidation, you know the apostles faced physical intimidation, intimidation with threats of arrest, and other things, but then also there's social intimidation, there's people trying to get you to stop through other threats and other consequences, there's, you know, work done to try to, you know, false brethren the Bible talks about being creeping into good churches, unaware, trying to make splits and cause division, and so discord among brethren, why? Because when there's discord, when there's unity and disjointness, you're not going to be able to do the full work and the full function that you're supposed to be doing as a body, as a church, so this understanding of how to deal with things, how to process them, I want to look at some biblical examples, first we need to understand where the source of information is coming from, when we're receiving information, you see information, because that does matter. Now, I'll put it this way, anything that's just truth or factual, just matter of fact, a factual statement shouldn't matter the source where it comes from. It shouldn't matter, because the truth is the truth, right? But here's why when you come across information, it's almost never just a statement of fact, here's some facts. It always comes along with an interpretation, with a purpose of saying, hey, look at this because this, this, this, this, this, and people connecting dots and coming to conclusions based off of that evidence. So, when people bring forward what they call evidence, or some information, whatever term you want to use, understanding who they are and what they're about is important because you're going to see what angle they're coming from. I mean, think about this, this is just, I mean, this is so basic, where people get their source of information from of what's going on in the world today, news, right? Well, you've got some people that will go to CNN and you've got some people that will go to Fox and you've got some people that go to some other channels and, look, we all know that there's different news agencies that are catering to different types of people who have different world views. Who have, you know, some cater to people who are very liberal in their politics and some people who are more conservative in their politics and they gear information towards those people and you have to understand where that's coming from because people have a certain mindset on how the world even functions and what's true and how everything operates to even, you know, to get, to communicate with people that, like, these days especially there's a lot of polarization and there's a lot of people, it's hard to even talk about things because the facts or whatever they believe in aren't the same as what these people believe in and it's obviously they're not all facts, right? There's information being given that is corrupted based on the bias of the person presenting the information and the people receiving it don't know how to see through that bias because you're accepting a conclusion without critically analyzing the evidence and this is extremely important for all manner of life, now I'm kind of using just some events that have happened recently with things that I see and it's going to continue to happen and continue to come and I thought that, you know what, this is going to be more beneficial and this isn't to, you know I'm not, like, taking sides or making a public announcement of what's right and who's wrong or whatever that's not the point of this sermon so I'm just going to point that out but I want you to be able to think about things and look, especially though when it comes from people who are out to destroy and to attack churches like this because this method is going to be used to try to build a mountain, so what happens is that people will come out, you've got one person over here and they're complaining about this and trying to make, stir up drama and cause a lot of problems over this thing and then you've got someone over here and they're causing all this drama and then it's they're trying to build this impression of going, like, wow look at all these problems and these are just horrible churches because there's all these, and it's really just a few people you know, a handful of people who are already have their own agendas already have their own issues and problems that now are just trying to, for their own reasons make just so discord and destroy now as I mentioned before, understanding that source is important when you look at that information, consider what is this about because, you know, there's certain people out there that I have listed here that are highlighted as far as what I've seen, you've got Robert Tuttle of the Reason Files he's got his own personal agenda against churches like ours, you've got Seth Bookout was an old member of Said Fast Baptist Church which, by the way, you know, I know personally that if you guys remember the Soul Winning app that we were building here at the very beginning back when the church first started, he was the guy that was writing the code for that app and it's funny now, because I've listened to some videos that he puts out and he makes it sound like he doesn't even remember my name and all this other stuff he's a joke, and he's a liar he's a total liar he doesn't have his facts, right but see, people salivate when there's someone coming out against his church, because the people who already hate our church they're gonna love, oh man, there's someone coming, oh he was an insider, oh he used to go to these churches, yeah, he was a false brother, crept in unawares from the beginning and now is just trying to push a bunch, peddle a bunch of garbage and it's obvious when you can see the whole picture when you can see through and that guy is just full of when you listen to him long enough you start to hear what's really in his heart I listened to one video he put out and he said something about a person who was changing their gender from a man to a woman to a man or something and he's like, good for him, or good for her or whatever, it's like wait a minute, what? good for them? the reason why I'm bringing this up is, okay, there's one thing, if someone has a problem with a church or something that's being done or something that leadership does, you think someone's guilty of a sin, you shouldn't change your convictions of what's right and wrong, you should still, if you're really a Christian, you should still hold to what the Bible says, and you could separate from a church and say, you know what, this person's wicked, or they're doing that that's wicked I can't be part of this church because this is really bad but you don't change like your core beliefs don't change while I still have integrity in God's word in the Bible because someone else is doing something bad and see, this is where the credibility goes out the window if I were to be attending a church somewhere and I witnessed, man this is messed up, this is wrong this shouldn't be happening here and I go, someone needs to speak up about this, someone needs to do this what I would do is you know, bring that up but then I'm going to retain my beliefs I'm going to say, well no, you still have to go to church the word of God is still true, you know, this is alright, because I genuinely believe it and this is a good way to discern between, does someone really believe what this is teaching, do they really believe what the church believes, or were they just faking it, are they just a bunch of phonies because when they come in and then they claim to have all these beliefs and that guy Seth Bookout, he was telling and this was crazy, I thought why don't you say this he was like talking about how he wanted to go on these go out and do some gay bashing I heard him I was there, I witnessed him and now it's like, you're saying, wait a minute now I heard that I'm like, that's extreme now look, I believe in what the Bible says, the punishment is for that act but I'm not saying, hey we should just go out and do, like that's totally off the wall and that was a red flag back then like, what is this guy saying but it's the first time I met him I didn't really know anything about him, I didn't know maybe he was just really ignorant and overzealous or whatever, I have no idea and it was just kind of bizarre when I heard that but now it's like who is this guy but between him and this other guy that got kicked out of Verity there's a bunch of people, there's people out there but you can tell that they're phonies because they don't actually stick to anything at all that they claim to believe, now it's just 100% different well, did you ever really believe to begin with? I don't think so and especially most of the people got kicked out of these churches or left these churches over really stupid reasons because they got offended or whatever, something that I should not be some earth-shattering, faith- shattering event right? None of them actually care what the Bible teaches, this is one of the ways when you look at a source to understand you know, don't forget that don't forget that here's what these people are standing for, this is what they represent and this is what they're trying to do, here's their agenda now why am I receiving this information and what am I missing and what context is not there and what what else what other explanations are possible than the one they're trying to feed to you it's the same nonsense I brought this up in a sermon before when this was going on with Pastor Shelley about the, oh well we have these statements from this guy of how much money he's paying him okay, and here's the dates he was paying him okay so what Pastor Shelley's a software developer, he makes a good living and at that time he was making money okay he's buying a house okay, he's had, you know what maybe if you bother to learn anything more about the situation you can see, hey he was having problems with this bill and this guy kept on jacking up the price and demanding more money and he's got a family he needs to move in and there's all these other things that are going on in that situation but no, you just want to believe and buy into some theory of oh wait look something's going on here we don't actually know what it is but this looks really suspicious, looks like he's stealing money, looks like he's doing that he's looking at this, it's a bunch of nonsense, a bunch of garbage but enough with that, I don't want to get too deep into the specifics, I've got one more example here though before we just get into just straight scripture because this is another retarded thing that I saw recently here's our bank statement for our church okay, now first of all I just want to point this out this isn't just public for anyone in the world to just come and take a look at our finances it's not it's a private organization but I have no problems with our church, remember it's coming and seeing how we're spending our money either it doesn't matter to me, it's fine, there's nothing there's nothing to hide here but here's the thing when people are trying to destroy a church we're not just going to publish this for you to try to find something that may have been done by accident that may be being done through ignorance, that oh wait it shouldn't be done that way or whatever for them to point out now and try to get you in trouble and try to destroy your church because you did something that wasn't the right way but maybe it was unknowingly right, and here's the thing the Bible teaches us to you know judge the spirits and to judge prophets based on their fruit and when you see someone, I'm not, look no one is above sin, first of all but when you see someone doing a good work and you are there and you know the church and you know the leadership and you see the work and you're a part of the work that's being done and it's all good you need to give people the benefit of the doubt if there's some doubt, you're saying well I don't know what this is, I don't know what that is and maybe there's things that need to be addressed but we're going to at least give them the benefit of the doubt and not just jump to conclusions and say oh well look at this and this and this and here's a perfect example this is one of the stupid things that I saw people can look at this and again, this is just information right, this is factual this is, this is factual information right here but how do you interpret the data and what context, this doesn't have all the context this is just data this is a date, amount and a transaction so one person can look at this and be like let's see, Panera Bread on June 1st, 350 bucks, oh Panera Bread June 1st, 100 bucks, oh man Panera Bread, 28 dollars June 1st, wow Fuddwreckers, 300 bucks on June 1st oh, Brickswood Fired Grill Pizza June 1st, 300 bucks, wow, Pastor Burzins must have been really hungry, he must have invited all his friends out or something and, or just ate a ton of food on June 1st because look at all these charges, look at all this all in one day, can you believe how much how gluttonous Pastor Burzins is for eating all this, I mean he must have just been living high ordering the most expensive stuff oh wait, no wait, June 1st maybe the reason why there's a lot of transactions on June 1st is because we had an event on June 1st maybe the reason why you're starting to see some things here, you know, there's a lot of reasons, here's my point, there's a lot of reasons why you can have charges on there just seeing charges doesn't mean anything now, I'll tell you this much when it comes to our finances when we get visitors come in, oftentimes I want to take them out to eat and you know what, the church pays for that visit to go out and to be hospitable and pay for another person, you know, for the meal of people who come and visit and I don't think there's anything wrong with that and when people labor, like we do with the soul winning we have drinks, we get food when we do our soul winning events, we provide for all that stuff we do the home school field trip, we do these things and provide for people when pastors come into town, guess what we're hospitable, as a church, collectively we're hospitable towards them remember the camping trip, what did we do? well, my wife got together these bins and these little food packages and all this stuff for their cabins right, but do you think that we personally paid for all of that, just out of my pocket no, the church paid for that to be hospitable towards them but if you go back and find the dates, when did you buy, oh, pass the are you buying this stuff for, you know anyone can do this and look and say, oh well you've got charges to Amazon, well what is this all your personal stuff to Amazon, no it's not now look, I have a record of receipts for all this stuff my point is though it, you know, that's the point is if you just provide one piece of information without any other context, you can speculate all day long as to well what's this for, what's that for, what's this charge for, what's that charge for what's this, you know, and you could be out of a lot of speculation but if you don't have any other context to that, you can't just start bringing forward accusations and you can't just be receiving accusations either unless there's something to actually accuse of, now again, if there was suspicion of impropriety going on in our church, then guess what our church would be, should be the ones that should care about that and deal with that in our church now there's issues, and we're going to go into this too, there's some issues that are more public in nature and there's some issues that are more private in nature and we need to be able to understand when is, what is appropriate for different situations as well and what does the Bible say about those things and who does it impact but let's get into Proverbs 16 because first I just want to deal with the character of certain people who are trying to destroy churches and good work and when you understand that one, this is the source then take that for what it is it doesn't mean that they're not presenting true information but how do we process that we understand that and be extra careful when people are out to destroy to say well what am I, what could I potentially be missing here is the result or conclusion they're coming to legitimate Proverbs 16 verse 27, the Bible says an ungodly man diggeth up evil so someone who goes around just trying to dig up dirt, dig up evil information about people to destroy them, the Bible says an ungodly man does that an ungodly man is going to go around trying to see well what kind of dirt can I dig up on this person and it says in his lips there is a burning fire and that digging up evil is talking about finding stuff to talk about, right because that's why it brings up his lips there's a burning fire, verse 28 says a froward man soweth strife and a whisperer separated chief friends, there are people out there that fit this bill, that have this characteristic part of their character is that they're a froward, they like to cause problems they like to sow strife they like these whisperers that go around spreading rumors and trying to separate chief friends, people who are best friends, this is what chief means right, it's their best friend but there's people who are going to come in and try to talk in the ear of one or talk in the ear of another and start spreading rumors, why to split that friendship to get people to separate, that's the purpose there are people out there that do these types of things intentionally we need to be aware of that flip over to Proverbs 28 Proverbs 28, verse number 4 there are people whose character matches what the Bible's saying here, look at Proverbs 28 verse number 4, the Bible says they that forsake the law praise the wicked those people I was referring to, that come out with all this stuff these are people who are forsaking God's law all of them they don't care what the Bible says they forsake the law but they praise the wicked and they that forsake the law, the Bible says praise the wicked, but such as keep the law, contend with them there's contention between, those are the adversaries, people who don't keep the law, don't want to have anything to do with God's word, they're praising wicked people and then there's those that are righteous, that love the law and want to keep the law contend with them, verse 5 evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the Lord understand all things these evil people, they don't understand true judgment that's why they're hypocrites in their judgment, they don't understand judgment jump down to verse number 25 there in Proverbs 28, the Bible says he that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife and that's another characteristic that I've noticed with a lot of the people I've mentioned here is that they are proud in their heart no one can tell them that they're wrong but he that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat, he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered and that's why I'm saying, you know if people were to have a problem with the church or with leadership then you need to go to the Bible and say this is why this is wrong not just what's in your heart but what the Bible says and you know what then you should at least take that for what it is and be able to move forward with that but what's interesting is that with all these adversaries it's funny how they all yolk up together too no one's going because look if I were to have some problem now obviously I'm in leadership here but if Rose were a person I was sitting in a pew and I'm in a church and there's someone else who's pastoring I would never go and join myself up with these other people, with other heretics just because they've left their group for their, look I'm still going to think that a heretic's a heretic right, people who have been kicked out and starting their own tirade against these IFB churches I don't want to have anything to do with them I don't want to have anything to do with them now I'm not going to want to have anything to do with them later either because my core beliefs are still going to stay the same because if the problem that you truly have is with some actual sin that's happening then it ought you ought not to change your core beliefs and that should be a red flag when people have just completely changed like that and then they want to bring forth this information and say well what's the motivation there and is this really the truth that they're bringing forward. Proverbs 26 Proverbs 26 verse number 20 the Bible reads where no wood is there the fire goeth out so where there is no tale bearer the strife ceaseth and that's the whole point of the tale bearers is to cause problems there wouldn't be problems if you don't have people going around being tale bearers telling stories that's what that means a storyteller verse 21 as coals are to burning coals and wood to fire so is a contentious man to kindle strife the words of a tale bearer are as wounds and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly no one likes there being gossip and tale bearing going on why because it's like wounds no it's not pleasant it's not fun for anyone to have to deal with it's not fun for me to even really stand up here and preach on this but it's important that we could just at least use the scripture and understand hey there's people like this around this is going to happen and we still need to be able to deal with the content of the information that we receive verse 23 burning lips and a wicked heart are like a pot captured covered with silver dross he that hateth dissembleth with his lips and layeth up deceit within him when he speaketh fair believe him not for there are seven abominations in his heart whose hatred is covered by deceit his wickedness shall be showed before the whole congregation who so dig at the pit shall fall therein and he that rolleth a stone it will return upon him a lying tongue hated those that are afflicted by it and a flattering mouth worketh ruin now just a general principle in the tip I don't have this this wasn't in my notes but when things when information starts coming out I've reiterated myself over and over again the wise thing to do is to wait is to observe you can see whatever but wait because you don't want to start spouting off and make it giving all your opinions on things especially if it has nothing to do with you you ought to just keep your mouth shut anyways because what business of yours I'm going to get to that in a minute but if it does have something to do with you again the prudent thing the wise thing is to try to say okay well what is all the evidence what is all the information what else might I be missing here and be diligent because here's the thing if you're interested in the truth that's what you do if you want to know what is true then you're going to want you're going to try to assess everything and not just go off half cocked going oh man someone is true can you believe this well hold on a second is that really true or is there another explanation is there anything else that I need to know before just going off and making up my mind and starting to open up my mouth when maybe it would be better to keep my mouth shut for a little while and see what all is is going on and transpiring turn if you would to Deuteronomy chapter 13 and I'm not saying and see people like to throw around the cult word all the time so if you come to our church just be prepared for that oh you go to that cult oh you know you can decide for yourself I don't really care that much it's kind of irritating but at the same time people are going to say it because other people say it and because it's just a word that people like to throw it's kind of like the word Nazi right I mean how many people at this point in your life have you ever heard being referred to as being a Nazi and then how many of those people do you think really are even close to being associated as a Nazi well guess what cult is kind of the same thing now here's my understanding and people have different definitions of a cult my understanding of a cult is that one you've got a leader that's supposed to have this special knowledge and that's going to you have to rely on that person to be able to tell you what's true and what's not true another element or aspect of a cult is that the leader tends to be really controlling to the sense of not wanting people to leave and isolating you from everybody else now you can judge for yourself we've got an open door policy here if you don't like our church you are more than free to leave now we don't want to see you go unless you just don't believe or don't agree with what with what's being taught here obviously if you are not with the doctrine then why would you be here to find a church that you're going to line up with but if you agree with this I don't want to see you go but I mean if you know if you're going to go, go if you're going to stay, stay we're going to do the work that's set up here how is that a cult? furthermore what we teach here is that this is our source of truth right here and that the Holy Ghost is capable of teaching every single one of us individually what's true and what's not true right and I am continually mentioning challenge me on what I'm preaching challenge me tonight and I don't mean come up and fight with me about it what I mean is it's not two man enters, one man leaves what I mean is challenge the thoughts challenge the ideas go home and take notes on the passages we're looking at and then say is the application that pastor made correct what do these verses say in context is he ripping anything out of context is what he's teaching the truth or not last I last I checked I didn't think cults did that I think they said no, no, no it says this but what it really means is this we're not looking to separate ourselves and go off into some jungle somewhere and build a compound okay and buy a bunch of guns and just hole up for the end of the world or something that's a cult we have no plans on doing that as long as I'm the pastor of this church we are not doing that okay so whatever you know people have these claims they want to say you're a cult it's just to try to drag your name through the mud try to make people say oh yeah you know this cult why are we a cult well we are a little bit different than the world so it's easier to call someone a cult when you have rules and standards that you apply to your life now look the rules are not dictated where this is the rule and I make all the rules for all of your home lives and if you don't follow my rules you're out that doesn't happen here you make up the rules for your household I make up rules for my household and I'm going to teach on the application that I think that we could make from God's word say here's what God's word says how do we apply this in our life based on what this says if the Bible says not to do this then maybe we shouldn't do this at home and you know what whatever you do at home that's up to you and what I do at home that's up to me but this is what the Bible says and that's what I'm going to teach and when you follow those principles you're going to end up looking different from the world because you're going to end up living differently you're going to be doing different things you're going to be abstaining from things that a lot of other people don't abstain from if you come to this church I'm going to teach you what the Bible says about drinking alcohol and that it's a sin and that it's wickedness and it's not just drunkenness the Bible says look not thou upon the wine when it is red when it is colored in a cup when it move with itself aright at the last it's saying it's like an adder bite it like a serpent the Bible is teaching you this is poison this is bad don't get involved with this it's not good for you so you shouldn't even be around him you shouldn't have anything to do with it but it's up to you to decide what you're going to do with that information so on one hand hey yeah you're going to look at me I believe this book so I'm not going to be you know I don't go out to the bars I don't go and hang out and do this stuff there's other things I don't do too that's going to be different from what the world does but these are just common things that are accepted in the world now look drinking I know there's plenty of people who don't go to church and they don't drink either and they can have the same rules whatever right but when you start adding these things together you look at the word of God we're going to look very different it's easy for people to label you as a cult because you look different and you know oh look you're dressed in that suit and tie and all this other stuff you know what the reason why I dress this way is because I want to show God respect and this is the best way for me to do that does that mean that you're not welcome here if you don't look like I do no of course not you decide for yourself how you want to dress okay this is why I do it just so you understand it's I try to dress my best for the Lord whatever that is okay and you decide that for yourself and I'm not looking at does anyone ever heard me say oh man this person they're dressed like that and you know like oh and you know you ought to never do that you ought to be talking down and talking bad about people for what they choose to do you know especially when it comes to something like like how you're dressed now the Bible teaches some things about how we ought to dress as men and women especially but I'm going to teach on that but it's still up to you to do it whatever you want to do and you're not less of a church member or more of a church member on these things and how you follow them or not follow them or whatever anyways enough on that because I want to get into just the discernment on information that you receive because sometimes it is appropriate to expose people and to expose and bring things to the surface and I'm definitely not for just cover ups of things that are that should never be covered up and this is a problem in a lot of churches is that there are too many times when a church will cover up scandals like horrible sins whether it be pedophilia or infidelity, adultery things like that that look we're not just trying to sweep things under the rug as if it just never happened and just pretend like everything's okay and no just keep going on and this person is going to keep you no way absolutely not I don't agree with that at all in no circumstance but you know what there's other things that don't just all on the one hand you've got very grievous problems with grievous sins like 1 Corinthians 5 type stuff the Bible teaches that hey if a brother does these things you're supposed to put away from among yourselves that wicked person that's what the Bible says read 1 Corinthians 5 at the end of the passage it goes through a whole list of sins and says if people are guilty if someone who's called a brother is guilty of doing these things then you need to put away from among yourselves that wicked person and that's another reason why people say oh you're a cult because you know it's like look we just follow what the Bible says if the Bible says to put that person away from among you then that's what we're going to do because we love the word of God and we want to operate and do things by the word of God and if people are guilty of that stuff then it needs to be known because how else are you going to separate from that person if it's not ever even known now most of those things though would still be done appropriately here it doesn't mean if someone in the church is guilty of doing something that's one of those sins that we need to put away it doesn't mean we just have to go and blast them publicly for the whole world to know that's not appropriate but if someone's guilty of committing some crime especially like a crime against a child or something you got to worry about them going somewhere else you better believe that that's going to get blasted if you've got false prophets that are out there deceiving the hearts and minds of the simple and leading people to hell then absolutely we'll call that out we'll expose that that needs to be broadcast publicly but not everything is to be broadcast publicly and not everyone should be running with this and dealing with it everything has an order we're in Deuteronomy 13 we're going to see here false prophets should be exposed and the Bible teaches that even if they're family members this is something that's so important that you need to expose the false prophet who's trying to lead people away from the Lord and go off and follow some other religion now I understand that we aren't currently living under these laws of the land but this is still the word of God and how God feels about these things so we could still apply this and learn from this on how God would treat these things look at verse number one the Bible reads if there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and give it the a sign or a wonder now first of all this is not just your average person who doesn't believe the Bible because your average person who doesn't believe the Bible isn't claiming to be a prophet and oh man I've got this dream and there's this sign coming and there's this wonder you know that's a different type of person would you not agree with that if this is someone who is out there claiming to have special knowledge and visions and is called would be considered a prophet so this is who the Bible is describing here not your average person this is just someone unique that would fill a role that's being described here as a prophet a dreamer of dreams verse two and the sign or the wonder come to pass where if he spake unto thee saying let us go after other gods which thou has not known and let us serve them so he's saying if this guy says hey there's this event that's going to happen or whatever and then it comes to pass they make this prophecy and it actually happens but he's saying so let's go serve these other gods who's not the Lord this is what the Bible is describing verse number three thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet say don't listen to that guy just because he says something and it happens to come to pass that doesn't mean that he's of God if he's telling you go after other gods he's not of God it makes perfect sense or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God proveth you so he's saying is God's testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul you shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice and you shall serve him and cleave unto him not cleave unto man not cleave unto some prophet cleave unto God and that's what I was saying before you know person people who actually genuinely have this belief should be you know sticking to what the word of God says regardless of what man does but let's keep reading verse number five and that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in so shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee now this could be shocking to people because this is so far removed from anything that we have today I understand that and I'm not saying hey we need to go out and start killing these people I'm not teaching that people love to take what we teach and try to say oh passive versions are saying this no I'm not but I am saying this that we shouldn't just take the word of God and you know belittle it or make it sound insane or crazy because it's not because this is the word of God and this is what God commanded to have done back when he gave this law and it wasn't crazy and it's not crazy now even though people might think this would be absolutely crazy to have a law like this we need to be careful not judging God's word for something that God intended and God look the reason why we were gathered together in the church is because we believe that this book is the word of God the Holy Bible is the word of God we're not here to ridicule and mock this book you know people like to mock, make a mockery of the death penalty laws that the Bible has in Leviticus chapter 20 some of the things that the Bible has a death penalty on like this one, a false prophet that's trying to drag people away from serving the Lord the Bible says hey that person is supposed to be put to death the Bible has a death penalty on you know if you steal another person kidnapping that person gets put to death the Bible has a death penalty on someone committing adultery with another man's wife the adulterer and adulteress are put to death that's God's word, that's God's law that's God's judgment okay God thought that that is an appropriate penalty sodomy same thing, if a man lies with a man he lies with a woman, they too shall be put to death, their blood shall be upon them same thing with thou shalt not suffer the which to live okay people who are atheists, people who don't believe in God they like to make fun of those passages oh, do you believe that? because today's society, today's world that's crazy but we believe the Bible I believe that God made that law and that the law of the Lord is perfect and that man isn't coming up with better laws that God came up with I don't believe that God knew that the pervert sought to just get the death penalty because there's no fixing them even the world will tell you that these child molesters, these pedophiles they can't be rehabilitated that's why they reoffend and reoffend and reoffend but you know, no, we're so smart that we think that they should just be put to jail give them a slap on the wrist oftentimes they don't even end up going to jail they'll do community service, or they'll go for like six months or a year, then they're back out again oh, but you have to register as an offender okay and then they do it again and they do it again until they get caught again and then they do it again until they get caught again instead of stopping the problem, we let them out to destroy, literally to destroy children's lives because that's about one of the worst things in the world that could happen to anybody is be defiled as a child they go out and destroy lives and the best punishment we have for that is, oh, let's just put them in prison for a few months or a few years insane sorry, no, God knows better okay and these other laws that we read about maybe you should check have I just been brainwashed by this world into thinking that this is crazy and maybe I should get back into the word of God to see, no, this is the truth and God's way is right and the world's way is wrong but, you know, we're a cult for believing that so if you want to be part of a cult, then go ahead you can stick around just wait for that clip to be taken out of context too now, right Pastor Burton says our Baptist church is a cult so you can't just believe everything that you hear verse number six, let's keep reading here though I'm not even getting to the point of going to this passage verse number six neither shalt thou spare neither shalt thou conceal him but thou shalt surely kill him thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death and afterwards the hand of all the people and thou shalt stone him with stones that he die because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage and all Israel shall hear and fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you why is this such a big deal? because God is the savior because when people are trying to lead people away from the savior you know that does tons of damage not just in this life but eternally you're trying to draw people away after false gods all the people that get drawn away after false gods are going to end up going to hell that's a big deal but my point isn't about the death penalty my point is this is that there's some things that are severe enough that even if it's your closest friend or family member, they still need to be exposed it still needs to come to light you can't just cover this up you can't just hide this he's trying to say, look don't cover this up even if it's your mother or your father or your sister or your brother, when they commit a crime like this this is serious it needs to be exposed it needs to be dealt with it needs to be handled so things that are like of course those need to be you can't just cover that up but not every situation or people who want to bring forth evidence on whatever is like worthy of the death penalty there's all manner of degrees of different things that could happen why am I even addressing this because some people are very easily swayed the Bible says in Proverbs 14 turn if you would to Proverbs Proverbs 17 Proverbs 14 verse 15 the Bible says, the simple believeth every word but the prudent man looketh well to his going simple means you're not very smart the simple man just believes every word people who just oh, internet said it must be true they're simple but not just the internet, obviously that's kind of a joke but really you can't just accept anything that anyone says just because they said it I'll even tell that to people sometimes when we go out soul winning and we preach the gospel to people you know, I'll tell them I don't expect you to believe me just because I'm saying that because some people will some people are simple some people say, oh wait, you're the pastor of the church well then I'll just believe what you say that's misplaced faith now obviously I know that I'm not there to deceive them, I know that but they don't know that they just have to trust that that's the case that's why we bring our Bibles with us when we go out and preach the gospel so that we can show people, hey look the Bible says this, the Bible says this here's what the Bible says to trust in the word of God not to trust in me, not to trust in any other person and this is why I do the preaching the way I do here too we turn to scriptures and we look at the scriptures and say this is why we should do this or not do this or believe this because of what the Bible says, not just because of an opinion obviously there's going to be cases where I'm making applications of the word of God but you decide for yourself, is that appropriate? is that correct? and when it comes to things that are being brought up you know, we can't just believe every word but another thing we need to ask ourselves is this even my business? as I mentioned before, you start hearing people bringing up stuff about this person or that person or this pastor is this my area of responsibility? is this something that I need to deal with? what does this have to do with me? now, it doesn't mean that you're just oh, you're just part of the cover-up no, how does this have any influence or impact and especially if it's something that's not some monumental thing that you just have to make a stand against then what's the point? what is your motivation then to get involved in something that probably has nothing to do with you anyways, Proverbs 26 verse 17 and you can turn it if you like, you're supposed to be in Proverbs 17 I'm going there next Proverbs 26 17 says he that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him is like one that taketh a dog by the ears so if you're walking by and there's strife there's fighting going on it has nothing to do with you you say, well, I'm just going to get involved anyways the Bible says it's like someone who's going to take a dog by the ears go up to a German shepherd and try to take him by the ears no, don't do that if you don't know what's going to happen it's not going to be good you're going to get hurt, you're going to get injured the dog's not going to like that at all it's going to turn and snap on you and bite you the Bible's saying when you just get involved in other people's business and other people's fights and other people's strife it's like what you're doing you're just asking to get hurt, you're asking to get injured what's the point, you have nothing to do with that leave it alone Proverbs 17 verse 14 the Bible says the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water therefore leave off contention before it be meddled with so the beginning of a fight of strife it's like when you let out water it's just going to keep going and going and expanding just leave it off, have nothing to do with it before it's meddled with don't get involved in that strife it's basically saying the same thing that Proverbs 26 says, look at verse 15 he that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just and they both are abomination to the Lord one of the reasons you've got to be careful in getting involved in other people's fights is if you don't know all the facts you might end up condemning someone who's just and justifying someone who's wicked and the Bible says that that's an abomination in the eyes of the Lord be very careful with their judgement very careful and that's something our words have a lot of power words, not just our words words in general have a lot of power they really do this is why you're seeing all the censorship because the powers that be know that words have a lot of power and that's why throughout history totalitarian regimes try to stifle speech because words have power words motivate people words move people and specifically when it comes to the word of God the word of God brings life the word of God brings change the word of God is powerful the Bible says it's more powerful it's sharper than a two-edged sword it's able to divide the thunder of the soul and the spirit it cuts right to the heart God's word is able to penetrate deeper than anything else than any physical tool the word of God can transform that is power but other words are powerful too the Bible teaches us that in James that the tongue is a fire, it's like a little member but that tongue is a world of iniquity that tongue can stoke flames that causes massive destruction just by what is being thrown out of your mouth and that's we're going to be responsible for every idle word that we say the Bible says in verse 17 a friend loveth at all times and a brother is born for adversity so I don't have problems standing by my friends, especially proven friends when allegations and things come up, I'm going to stand by them and give them the benefit of the doubt because I know them at least as much as I know them I know them enough to be willing to say okay, well, I may not know all the details but I can look and see if this person and this person and this person are bringing things up I know where they stand I know what their motivation is I know what they're trying to do so if they're the ones that are bringing this forward I also know what this guy is doing so I'm going to stand with him and give him the benefit of the doubt now if there's a reason to say hey, this person is wrong though your friend did something wrong, then you know what? I'm going to stand with the truth and whatever is appropriate is appropriate and I already had to deal with that with a friend of mine with Pastor Romero he was a personal friend of mine but you know what? when all of that came out and came forward it is what it is I mean, you just have to deal with it and move on and not brush it under the rug but deal with it and it was dealt with and I didn't have to deal with it personally because that was, again, someone else's church but even just publicly going, yeah, that's not right that's wicked as hell you're calling it out verse number 19 here in Proverbs 17, the Bible says he loveth transgression that loveth strife transgression is sin the person who loves strife and loves fighting they love transgression and he that exalteth his gate seeketh destruction he that at the froward heart findeth no good and he that at the perverse tongue falleth into mischief I'm running out of time here the Bible says in Proverbs 20 verse 3 it is an honor for a man to cease from strife it's honorable to stop fighting to cease, to stop from fighting but every fool will be meddling and you see people who are just always meddling in other people's business it's a fool it's a fool Proverbs 11 is the last place we'll turn to Proverbs 11 so I don't know about you hopefully this is coming across clearly it feels a little disjointed to me so I'm going to recap just some of the main points I want to make sure that we get from the word of God and the application of the word of God one, we know that there's going to be adversaries we know there's going to be people who are going to be trying to persuade you to not believe the things of the word of God not to believe in the Bible but not just that but to also to persuade you to form factions and be disjointed and try to cause problems within churches so that the work can just not be done that is the goal of some people we see that clearly in scripture that there's people out there that want to do that there's people out there that love drama and try to cause problems and strife when you get confronted with information you should ask yourself first of all is this even have anything to do with me is this any of my business and if it's not then why do I even care about this why do I want to get dragged into some drama that doesn't belong to me some fight that doesn't belong to me why does that really matter to me if for some reason you think it does matter well consider where your source of information is coming from and consider should I even be receiving this because if someone's just making an accusation information is one thing but if someone's making an accusation against someone and especially if it's against an elder and it's not received before two and three witnesses and it's not done appropriately then you shouldn't even be receiving it to begin with and again if it's some other church so it doesn't really matter it doesn't apply to you then what's the point trying to think what else there's definitely a time not to cover things up right false profits things that are that are criminal especially things are like that you know things need to be exposed and not just brushed under the rug but at the same time it's also appropriate to be able to look past some transgressions and people are doing good work I would only hope that I would get a little bit of mercy and grace if I don't do everything perfectly in the operation of this church in my realm of authority and work here that if I miss something if I don't do something right that people aren't going to just try to throw me under the bus and start railing on me because I didn't do something right I mean when we moved into this building I didn't know that I had to get the certificate of occupancy or whatever from the fire department we didn't make any real structural changes here I thought everything was fine I didn't even know I had to do that somebody reported us I don't think there was anyone within our church but my point is you know people could point to that and say oh well Pastor Brooks you're not keeping them safe you don't have the fire extinguishers up you don't have this and that and that's your job and that's your authority and that's you know you're responsible for that and you know what that would be true I'm responsible for that I'm responsible for that but is that something that you're going to say wow you must be a really wicked person I mean you don't really care about your congregation at all now do you for example if we didn't have that not an exit sign on that door if that wasn't there would you be like Pastor Burzins you wicked person for not telling people that that's not an exit it's not an exit it's not an exit okay because the fire code says that that's not an exit because it has a lock on it okay now I didn't know that before but I've been enlightened but you can see obviously it's an extreme this is an extreme example it's something that could be a silly example my point is this if you know that you come to this church and you know me and you see the work that we're doing here I know I'm not perfect you know I'm not perfect but if you got people just trying to just anything that I do just trying to find fault with it if you look close enough you're going to find fault with me I'm doing something wrong but use the proper judgment and discernment to say well does that mean that Pastor Burzins is a wicked person and needs to step down because he's making all these terrible errors and judgments like not having the not an exit sign on the door or is it something that maybe we should give Pastor Burzins a little bit of grace of going okay he didn't know that or he doesn't know all of the tax laws and all these other laws you know whatever like all these different things that you could potentially be doing wrong but we can see he's not a thief he's not doing this he's not doing you know he doesn't have these major problems so maybe we could cut him a little slack and give him a little grace because we can see what's being done and that this isn't you know he's not just some bad person there's a difference but if I'm sneaking around and getting drunk and cheating on my wife that's another story that's totally different then you say get this guy out of here I mean it's not that hard right it doesn't get hard until you start getting into the areas where it's like well wait how bad is this really and then you know people want to shed their own spin on it and make something sound really bad and other things maybe not so bad and again look at who's trying to do that what's their agenda and then just take the information for what it says is there another possibility is there another explanation for what actually happened and then even if there is something that's found out say this is wrong what is the gravity of that what's the significance of that what does that fall under I mean people could look at you know my kids are still pretty young but as they get into teenage years one of them might end up doing something really bad right that I'm gonna have to deal with as a father but if one of my kids does something really bad does that just mean well you know what you're not ruling your household well so you're out of here you know what some people would say that but you know who's gonna be saying that it's the people who don't even go to church because all these people that I was talking about with the exception of maybe one I don't know that much about the reason files retard but he might be going I don't know that much about him other than that he's terrible at his job of trying to be an investigative reporter because the facts the so-called facts are all wrong but anyways I want to get into that Proverbs 11 let's finish up with this verse number one we're gonna read Proverbs 11 here about being prudent when dealing with wicked people right just how do we how do we be prudent about this verse number one a false balance is abomination to the Lord we went over that this morning in this morning sermon a false balance is abomination to the Lord but a just weight is his delight now this is gonna be more applied instead of the financial side of things I was looking at this morning about the actual judgment right having false balance meaning not not not giving the right judgment on things a just weight that's like justice right that's his delight and God is a God of justice he wants to see things done and dealt with appropriately verse two when pride cometh then come a shame but with the lowly is wisdom the integrity of the upright shall guide them but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them riches profit not in the day of wrath but righteousness delivereth from death first and foremost for ourselves and as much as is humanly possible we need to be able to stay above reproach because the people are always the adversaries are always gonna be out there trying to throw accusations around trying to hope something sticks try to disrupt the work that's being done what we need to do everybody is to try to live a life of righteousness because then we know that God definitely is going to be on our side and you can walk with clarity of mind and conscience knowing that hey whatever if these people are bringing something up either it's really old from a long time ago or whatever like some past transgression that you had or it's a lie and you want to be able to be at a point where you can say hey if someone's gonna bring this up against me this is a lie and be able to say so with looking people right in the eyes because you're telling the truth because that's what matters and this is what's gonna ultimately protect you because if you're out sinning and doing wicked things and someone calls you out on it you're gonna have to deal with it you're gonna have to suffer the consequences of doing those things but let's keep reading here verse number five the righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness the righteousness of the upright shall deliver them but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness when a wicked man dieth his expectation shall perish in the hope of unjust men perisheth the righteous is delivered out of trouble and the wicked cometh in his stead so over and over again basically the Bible teaches here you reap what you sow and if you're doing right and living righteous then you know what you got nothing to worry about ultimately but if you're being wicked and setting traps for people guess what you're gonna fall into that trap you're gonna be ensnared and these people that want to be adversaries and come out you know what they're gonna end up ultimately being exposed and falling into their own traps and people who are just constantly railing guess what it's gonna come back on them verse nine and hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbor and through knowledge shall the just be delivered when it goeth well with the righteous the city rejoiceth and when the wicked perish there is shouting by the blessing of the upright the city is exalted but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked again you know verse nine hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbor verse eleven the city is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked there's a lot of power in the words which is why these words and accusations and things are being brought forward because there's this power because there's so much damage can be done verse twelve he that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbor but a man of understanding look at this holdeth his peace you know what it means to hold your peace not say anything many times the wise thing to do is to refrain from saying anything not always there's a time and a place for everything but the majority of times I would say it's prudent and it's wise just to hold your peace verse thirteen a tale bearer revealeth secrets but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter someone who's faithful reliable dependable someone you can trust they don't just go repeating all of your secrets now when it says there it says secrets it doesn't say sins it's not always the same thing okay a secret is just something that could be private and personal to you it doesn't have to be a sin so there's a distinction there don't just think that that's talking about sins when it says secrets it says secrets a tale bearer is someone you can't trust with some with information you want to confide in because they're just going to go around and just spread it because they don't care about you because they hate you that's why they're going to go around and talk about that whatever you said hey no don't talk this is between you and me and it becomes between everybody but someone who's faithful they can know when to close their mouth conceal a matter jump down to verse seventeen the merciful man doeth good to his own soul but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh the wicked worketh a deceitful work but to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward as righteousness tended to life so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death they that are of a froward heart are abomination to the Lord but such as are upright in their way are his delight though hand joined in hand the wicked shall not be unpunished what that means hand joined in it doesn't matter how many of these these wicked people join up and yoke up together they could join forces hand joined in hand it doesn't matter how seemingly strong they get they're not going to be unpunished why? because God's the one who punishes because God's going to bring their way upon their own head and it doesn't matter how many of the trash can people all join together into a big group and have a reprobate party it doesn't matter they could try to pull together all their forces the wicked shall not be unpunished but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered the seed of the righteous shall be delivered hey let's try to work on like I said before being above reproach because none of us are perfect nobody is and you look hard enough you're going to find problems with everybody everybody but our best defense is to just say you know what if someone's bringing this stuff up it's a lie or you don't have all the information and you know like I said with this you know if our church members you want to look at this it's up here you know what I'll leave it up here and I won't watch and you could come up here if you want to look at it and say well passive versions you know if you're worried that I might think bad of you if you look at it or something I'll leave it up here and I'll walk away I'm serious I'm going to do that okay I don't care if you look at it I don't want people feeling like oh man but if I do that you know because this is another reason why we get you know these accusations come forward of saying oh well you can't really I've heard so many people well you can't really question they say that you could question but you can't really do it yes you can who in here has ever asked a question about a doctrine that you either disagreed with me on or you wanted more clarification who's ever come to me personally and asked me a question about that I see quite a few hands going up in the auditorium was it some horrible experience that you never want to do again ask brother Devin he's the number one person he asks me a lot of questions so that's why I'm going to use him as my example because I know he keeps coming back obviously I'm not making him feel uncomfortable and you know what I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable I want you to be able to come to me okay so it's up you know it is what it is I'm going to leave this here because I've got nothing to hide and this hasn't been an issue here anyways I'm not like bringing this up because I think there's some issue here the point is you know we need to be wise with with everything when you hear something something comes across your plate you know consider what the Bible says consider who these people are consider what their agenda is consider the motivation consider all these things what else can can possibly be here and you know what if you got a question on this ask me about it and you know what I'm going to tell you right now though what's not acceptable is to take screenshots of this to use to put out to the public not acceptable I'm not okay with that not because I have something to hide but because there is no reason to just give any potential ammunition for someone to start making up stuff and making up lives it's no one else's business anyways it's church business no problems with you looking at this but do not just go starting to make this stuff public alright so I'm going to ask one of you gentlemen to make sure that doesn't happen because like I said I'm not going to I don't care if people want to come up and look at this doesn't matter to me but that I do not want to have happen no screenshots being taken of this stuff and going out because what this is you know what this is your money it's God's money it's what it is it's not my money it's not your money it's God's money and this is how we deal with it so as far as our word of prayer dear heavenly father Lord we thank you so much for your word we thank you so much for all the things that we could learn I pray that you please help us to grow in our discernment and our understanding and that you would help us to be able to make righteous judgments and not to be a respecter of persons Lord but also to be able to not just run after railing accusations and just believe everything we hear everything that other people say Lord but that we would know what's appropriate know what we should even be spending our time in and not spending our time in dear Lord I pray that you please just bless this church help us to grow and to thrive and to do your work Lord and none of us here are perfect but we pray that you would please just help us daily to overcome our own faults and our own sins that we can be better vessels better equipped to serve you and to serve this community and to reach people with the gospel of Christ Lord and to just do something that you could be proud of that you would bless us for and help us to magnify and glorify your name we love you in Jesus name we pray amen all right we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed I'm going to ask brother Peter to do that for us all right church you can grab your hymnals and open up the song 369 hymn 369 I know the bible is true hymn 369 on the first I know the bible was sent from God the old as well as the new inspired in holy the living word I know the bible is true I know the bible is true I know I know I know the bible is true divinely inspired the whole way through I know the bible is true I know the story of Christ is true his virgin glorious birth his life is dead in the open tomb and his return to the earth I know I know I know the bible is true divinely inspired the whole way through I know the bible is true I know the bible is true I know the bible is holy true for peace it gave me within it finds me comforts me day by day and gives me victory for sin I know I know I know the bible is true divinely inspired the whole way through I know the bible is true on the last though foes denied with the spirit fold the message old but still new it's true this leader reached by his soul I know the bible is true I know I know I know the bible is true divinely inspired the whole way through I know the bible is true Amen, great singing, thank you so much for coming you guys. Thank you.